Periodically, I have been asked to play rugby by friends who play. I then laugh at them and call them homos. Rugby is an anomaly in our culture. I have never seen any other activity which brings about such drastic change in personalities as does rugby. Now for those of my readers not from America who happen to play rugby, you can rest assured that I'm not talking about you. I am exploring the American cultural phenomenon of rugby in America. I have never met any rugby players from across the waters, but I am sure they are completely different, I'll explain why in just a bit.
I have known several people who play rugby on many different levels. I've met people who play recreationally in what are basically pickup games, I've met people who play at the high school or college level, and I've also met people who play competitively in different intramural leagues, whether they be city leagues, intercollegiate intramural teams, etc. Rugby seems to have the same effect on most everyone who plays (at least of the people I've known). I think the reason it has the same effect on people is because rugby attracts a particular type of person. I've outlined this theory below.
Rugby Hypothesis: Rugby is for alcoholic, sexually confused losers who are desperately searching for something to give them confidence in their own questionable masculinity.
I'm not even going to go into the basics of the game. The game itself isn't really what my article is about. It's the personal, social, and cultural effects participation has on players. Suffice it to say that rugby is the precursor to American football, which has become far more popular and far more widely played in America. The first reason I think the type of people outlined above are drawn to rugby is because they are not talented enough to participate in any real sports, such as football. This is where I separate American rugby players from rugby players across the globe. In Europe, for example, rugby is a very popular sport which people actually want to participate in from a young age. In America, however, other sports such as football, basketball, and even baseball take more precedence at the younger ages. Rugby is something of a fallback sport for people who can't cut it in other sports.
It reminds me of my middle school athletic experience. Every winter, if you were a boy and wanted to play sports, you could either try out for basketball, and only twelve would make the cut, or you could go out for the wrestling team, which everyone made. Every year basketball tryouts were always before the wrestling team's first practice to save failed basketball hopefuls the embarrassment of crawling to the wrestling coach the second week of practice and telling him he'd failed to make the basketball team and wanted to be on the wrestling team to try and restore some sense of self-worth as a athlete. I played basketball, and we shared the gym with the wrestling team, with one team's practice following the other. I remember going out onto the basketball court with my practice jersey with the other basketball players and the wrestling team referring to us as "wimps" and "pussies" because we weren't playing the "real man's sport." The ironic thing was that all the guys calling me a wimp for playing basketball had tried out for the basketball team and gotten cut, and frankly, guys whom I probably could have beaten at wrestling too.
Those same guys who harassed me for making the basketball team when they got cut are the same kind of guys who are now calling me a pussy for preferring football to rugby. I happen to find football a more enjoyable sport, to play and to watch. Yet in the minds of rugby players, running around and being hit by two hundred pound men in a game of rugby is far more manly than running around and being hit by two hundred fifty or three hundred pound men playing football. Rugby players will try and make themselves feel better by saying things like "Give blood, play rugby," and "Helmets and pads are for pussies." Basically trying to accentuate the risk inherent with playing rugby and the wimpy nature of football players based on their pitiful need to wear padding. Of course, if you ever suggest that maybe football players wear padding because it's a more violent sport, rugby players will always get pissed off and defiantly shout. "That's bullshit! Rugby is so much more dangerous! We get hurt all the time!"
This brings me to my second point about rugby players. They're fucking stupid. They seem overly eager to emphasize the dangers of the game, rather than discuss what they feel is fun about the game. If you like a game, fine, like it because it's fun, don't like it because you get hurt. That's the stupidest reason to like something I've ever heard of. Rugby players often confuse "manliness" and "stupidity." Believe it or not, they are not actually the same thing. If I went into a room full of rugby players and snapped my dick off with a pair of bolt cutters, they would all buy me a drink, build me a statue, and name their team after me. If, however, I wear a cup to protect my dick in a physical contact sport, I am ridiculed for being a pussy. You see, according to rugby players, real men put their genitals in harm's way. And God help you if you happen to be associated with a rugby player when he sustains an injury. Jesus Christ. My freshman year, my roommate played rugby and the week he got a concussion that was all he talked about all fucking week. I wanted to give him another one. It's like they take some sort of sick pride in being hurt playing an idiotic sport. I wasn't proud when I hurt myself playing football. But then again, I'm not retarded.
One of the oddest things about rugby is that it's not only an activity, it transforms itself into a lifestyle. Rugby players eat, drink, and breathe all things rugby. Even professional athletes making millions of dollars a year aren't as zealous as rugby players. This is where I've seen the most disturbing changes in people I've known when they start playing rugby, and this is what really draws in the sexually confused losers.
Your rugby team becomes your first family. Not your second family, your first. Rugby players do everything together because they feel like they share this deep bond because they run around giving each other concussions. I know on most sports teams you tend to develop certain friendships and bonds, but with rugby it approaches a whole new level, almost one of exclusivity. It's like they think of themselves as members of some highly desirable and exclusive company, like Army Rangers or Navy Seals. It's like they completely forget that any dumbass can play rugby. All you have to do is be willing to get hurt on a regular basis and you're in. And then they think they have something to be proud of. I've known a lot of rugby players who literally do not associate socially with anyone who doesn't play rugby. This is because rugby is a collection of misfits who were never the least bit popular until they played rugby. Then they joined and they have all these other social misfit friends to hang out with, so they lord their "popularity" over everyone else. When talking to their "other" friends who don't play rugby, they become complete dickheads and think their shit doesn't stink just because after years of being a nobody, they're on the rugby team, so they're a nobody on a team with a bunch of nobodies, which they mistake for popularity, so they all of a sudden think they're above all the people they used to consider friends. I've known people who show up at parties with their "other" friends on a Friday night for five minutes, just long enough to show off their new and better rugby friends or their new girlfriend they met at a rugby party because they think they're going to make you jealous, and then they tell you all about all the other parties they have to go to that night because they're so fucking popular because they play rugby. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. You get to party with a bunch of retarded sexually-confused jackasses. I'm so fucking jealous.
And then we have the rugby parties. When you play rugby, it is a strict requirement that you party with the other rugby players every day on which there is a game. I say party because it's the nicest word I can think of to refer to what are really more like homoerotic drinking binges. One of the main requirements for playing rugby is a tendency toward alcoholism. Rugby players think nothing is more manly (besides maybe getting a concussion) than out-drinking other people. I have heard from more than one source that at rugby parties, if you pass out from drinking too much, there is an unspoken agreement that the remaining guests get to do whatever they want to you, and one of the most common punishments is being "tea-bagged." Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, "tea-bagging" is when one guy is lying on his back (asleep or in this case passed out) and another guy lowers his scrotum into the sleeping guy's mouth, followed by the uproarious laughter of the audience and often including a picture of the unconscious guy with the other's scrotum in his mouth. Now, I'm not trying to be argumentative, but am I the only person who thinks this is very fucking gay? Forgive me, but I think there is something very homosexual about one guy putting his genitals in another guy's mouth while other guys watch. In fact, it's as close to live gay porn as you're going to get. But rugby players always get very offended at the implication that tea-bagging is gay and will yell and shout and say a few gay slurs just so everyone is clear that they are not gay. Then they go and put their genitals in another guy's mouth. Which is another reason I think a lot (if not all) rugby players are secretly gay, they get very very pissed off if you suggest that anything associated with rugby is gay. They're very insecure with their sexuality. I'm sure a lot of people think I myself am secretly gay because it may seem like I do a lot of gay-bashing on my site. In fact, I have been accused of being gay in a couple different emails. That's fine, think I'm gay. I'm not going to lose any sleep just because some dumbass I don't even know thinks I'm gay. I am comfortable with my sexuality. Rugby players, however, get extremely angry and want to break out the oil and wrestle you to prove how much more manly they are than you.
Aside from the whole mouth-to-genital thing, I happen to think there's something a little fishy about a large group of the same guys hanging out and getting drunk together doing God-knows-what to each other and talking about how extremely manly they are on a regular basis. It's kind of like when you're at the gym working out and there is always that one group of guys who lift weights with the extremely tight shorts and tank tops and they all brag about how much they can bench and they're all studying each other's ultra-manly pecks and talking about who's doing what muscle group today and how masculine they are. And then maybe they're in the shower slapping each other's wet naked asses with towels while all the straight people are just trying to get the hell out of there. That's like rugby homoerotic drinking binges. You don't actually have to be having butt sex for something to be gay. I think putting your genitals in another guy's mouth counts as gay. And bragging to other men about how much of a man you think you are is very gay. I'm sure there are going to be rugby players somewhere who read this and say something like "We should kick that guy's ass!" or "He's just jealous because he doesn't have any friends!" or "He's just accusing us of being gay because he's really a closet homosexual!" or "I am so not gay, oh look, somebody passed out, I'm going to put my scrotum in his mouth!" So they'll get all pissed off at me and think they should all kick my asses, and then to decide who gets the honor of emailing me to tell me what a faggot I am, they'll all strip down to their underwear, oil each other up, and wrestle to see who is the most manly of all. Oh, and the winner gets to put his genitals in the loser's mouth because he's so extremely manly. Fags.
rugby players want to oil me up and wrestle me to prove how much more manly they are than me